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Inside the Head of O.J.’s Gal Pal

I must admit that I find myself strangely fascinated with Christie Prody, O.J. Simpson’s girlfriend of the last 10 years. The AP has a profile on her today, telling the story of how this small-town Minnesota girl moved to L.A. at age 20, and found herself enchanted by the alleged double-murderer during his Trial of the Century. So she started hanging out around his house, and although we don’t know exactly what happened next, we do know they’ve been together for a decade now. She’s 32; he’s 60.

But it hasn’t been all roses. There have been domestic-violence calls on both sides. And, of course, O.J. now finds himself in the middle of his 28 million-count indictment on armed robbery/kidnapping/fishing without a license, etc. Still, through thick and thin, Christie — an attractive young woman who surely could find herself a more, um, stable partner — sticks by her man. Why?

I think this is why I find Prody, who’s close to my own age, so fascinating — because she is willfully doing something that, to the earth’s other 6 billion inhabitants, seems so plainly insane, possibly suicidal. I’d love to know how she rationalizes her choice to cast her lot with the likes of O.J. I imagine a conversation with her going something like this:

Me: Why would you date a double-murderer? Aren’t you concerned that he might one day do to you what he did to Nicole?

Prody: He was acquitted! He’s innocent!

Me: Fine, even if we give him a pass on the murders, don’t you remember the 911 tape? The guy’s a wife-batterer, is that really someone you want to spend your life with?

Prody: He’s a changed man.

Me: OK, people can change their ways, I can accept that. But, just two years ago, you accused O.J. of — let me quote from the AP here — “coming uninvited into (your) home, erasing messages on (your) answering machine, taking pages out of an address book and also taking a letter.” Didn’t that incident — or any of the other spats requiring police intervention — make you think that maybe he hadn’t changed so much after all?

Prody: What can I say? Love is strange.

Me: Indeed.

The AP notes that in her high-school yearbook, Prody wrote that she plans to “get my Ph.D. in psychiatry.” I suspect it would take a Ph.D. in psychiatry to figure her out.